Category: mini’s

I’ve got another miniature project for you guys today, this hall stand …

I purchased this a while back from Miniature Crush, but wouldn’t you know it, when I went to look for a link for you guys I couldn’t find one.  I don’t know if they are sold out, or just no longer carrying this piece.  There are quite a few identical and/or similar items available on Etsy though.

I bought this one intending to use it in the foyer of my Victorian dollhouse.

For those of you who may be new, this is a dollhouse that my dad made for me back in the early 90’s.  I had actually given it away to my in-laws (not sure what I was thinking!) about 10 years ago, but after I retired, I decided I wanted it back.  Luckily they hadn’t gotten rid of it themselves, and they also hadn’t done much with it.  Not so luckily, they had emptied out the contents and now don’t know where they put them.  So I was starting over with furnishings.

I did have a hall stand in the foyer originally …

so I decided to replace it with something similar.

The unfinished hall stand came with some very uninspired hardware.

Just a set of 5 ‘gold’ knobs to use both on the drawer and as the hooks on either side of the mirror.

So my first job was to find better options.  Luckily I already had a decent antique bronze drawer pull, but I needed to find hooks.  I ended with with a set of 4 antique bronze coat hooks from Colonial Miniatures via Etsy.

While I waited for them to arrive, I painted up the hall stand using Dixie Belle’s Blue Grass.  I sanded the finish to give it some age, and then I glued the hooks in place with super glue.

Your q tip for today; always glue things in place before adding a wax or oil topcoat.

You guys, these hooks were really bendy, and somehow I didn’t expect that.  When I started applying a finishing coat of Dixie Belle’s Big Mama’s Butta, I noticed that I had bent them totally out of whack.  Fortunately, I was able to bend them back without breaking them.  I did have to hold my breath for a minute there though.  So if you end up purchasing these exact hooks, just use caution when manipulating them.

I’m sorry, I don’t remember precisely where the drawer pull came from.

But it paired beautifully with the coat hooks.

I styled the photos for this post using one of the watering cans that I painted up last year.

I filled the can with a single flower bud from my verbena bonariensis.

which worked perfectly as an entire miniature flower arrangement.

I’m quite happy with how my hall stand turned out.

It’s a bit tricky to get a photo of it in place.

And it’s going to be even trickier to get my hand and a paint brush inside that foyer to re-paint the trim.

That seafoam green has got to go though, so wish me luck on that!

I’m sure that many of you remember my perfect English sofa.

I initially painted that up back in January to go in the living room of dollhouse No. 42.

I liked it so much that I ordered a 2nd sofa of the same style to paint for my Victorian dollhouse.

But then, I realized that another style option was an even closer match to the inspiration photo from the Perfect English Farmhouse, the White Chesterfield from The Modern Dollhouse.

So I ordered that one too.

They’ve sat around ever since, but during our recent heatwave/hazardous air quality alert I needed some indoor activities so I pulled them out and painted them up.

I followed the exact same technique that I used on the first one, so if you want those precise details you can head over to this post …

But basically, I started with a wash of Dixie Belle’s Putty, then dry brushed their Ecru over that.  Then I taped off some grain sack style stripes and painted them with Dixie Belle’s Barn Red.

This time around the stripes got a little too solid looking, so after they were dry I sanded them slightly to give them a more worn appearance.

I finished them off with a coat of Dixie Belle’s clear wax.

This 2nd style of sofa is definitely closer to the inspiration piece on the cover of Perfect English Farmhouse.

I plan to use this one in the living room of my Victorian dollhouse.

But as you can see, I’m still in need of additional inspiration for this room.  So I’ll have to work on that.

In the meantime, the Chesterfield came with a pair of throw pillows that I don’t intend to use with it.  So I painted them up to go with the other two sofas.

I used the same technique, a wash of Putty followed by some dry brushed Ecru.  Then I added some knob transfers from redesign with prima.

It worked out quite well to add a transfer over painted fabric.

I also finished the pillows off with a coat of clear wax.

I guess the only question remaining is what am I going to do with these other two sofas?

For now I am listing them on my ‘miniatures for sale‘ page.  FYI, although I usually don’t offer shipping, I will ship miniatures.  So be sure to check that out if you are interested.

If they don’t sell, I think they might be perfect for the Christmas Cottage dollhouse that I plan to finish up this fall.  You’ll just have to stay tuned to see how that works out!

It has been just too hot and humid around here lately to work out in my carriage house workshop, so I had to go back to painting on my makeshift indoor workbench (a.k.a. my baby grand piano).

As you can imagine, that means I’m somewhat limited as to the size of projects I’m working on.  So I’ve gone back to finish up a couple of miniature projects.

For today’s project, I pulled out the pair of miniature dressers that I purchased from Temu way back in January.

I had a little bit of my custom mix of Garden Green paint left over, so I thought why not use it on one of them.

After first giving the dresser a quick sanding to smooth out any rough edges, I gave it two coats of my Garden Green.

Then I pulled out some petite floral transfers from the I.O.D. Saint Ouen collection.  I added one down the center of the front …

Then I wrapped one around each side.

The curved writing at the bottom is also from the Saint Ouen transfer.

It wasn’t until I was pulling the drawers back out to sand the edges that I realized I’d make a silly mistake.

I put one of the drawers back in upside down before I added the transfers.

Ugh!

If I flip the drawer over and put it back in the correct way, well …

I guess it doesn’t look totally wrong.  In fact, I’m not sure anyone else would even really notice.  But since I know about it, it really bugs me.

Unfortunately, a do-over isn’t in the cards because I used up 3 out of 4 of those tiny florals.

Well, who opens all of the drawers on these things anyway, right?

I guess I’ll just keep calm and drink tea, like the teapot says …

although in this instance it will have to be iced tea.

FYI, that sweet little teapot and tea cup came from Twelve Time More Teeny on Etsy.

I have to confess, I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to do with this little green dresser, but I sure do love it.

As for the 2nd dresser, I do already know where it’s going to go.

But first, let’s see how it turned out.

I painted this one in Dixie Belle’s Ecru, and then added another tiny transfer from the Saint Ouen set to the front.

After sanding the edges and applying some of Dixie Belle’s clear wax, I used their Dixie Dirt in Ash to add a little dimension with some shading.

I also lined the drawers with some Tim Holtz Worn Wallpaper scraps.

As for where this one is going to go … well, it is tucked away a little bit.

It’s under the staircase at the back of my Victorian dollhouse.

By the way, can we all just take a moment to marvel at the fact that when my dad built this dollhouse, he took the time to add a small door to access storage space under the staircase.  He was nothing if not meticulous.

And sometimes the acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree, because now I’ve taken the time to tuck a dresser back in there too.  Because if it were me, I’d certainly want to utilize that space for a piece of hand painted furniture, wouldn’t you?

Even though it’s difficult to see back there, and even more impossible to photograph.

Also, in case you are wondering, yes, the little door does open but there isn’t anything inside.  I must confess that I was hoping to find a secret hidden message from my dad.  But sadly, no.

I’m only now realizing that clearly I need to tuck some things inside there.  Maybe Christmas decorations?  Or just some boxes of stuff?  And definitely a secret hidden message for someone to find one day.

But for now, what do you think of my two mini dressers?

Which one is your favorite?  Leave a comment and let me know.

I’ve finished up another room in the Christmas Cottage to share with you today.

This is the room that I ‘wallpapered’ in some October Afternoon scrapbook paper in a pretty red and mint green plaid (I shared a sneak peek of it last week).

I added the pine flooring from Hobby Lobby here too, but this time I gave it a white wash using watered down Dixie Belle Drop Cloth paint.  I used a a ratio of about 1 part paint to 3 parts water.  After brushing that on, I wiped away any excess until I got the look I wanted.

By the way, if you’re curious about the difference between white washing, pickling, lime waxing or cerusing, check out the post I wrote back in 2018 about these techniques …

Anyway, moving on.

Next up I decided to add some cushioned window seats.

I have to confess, I didn’t do the neatest of jobs on that, but I think they are good enough.  I simply cut out a piece of cardboard to fit and then covered it with some batting and fabric using Titebond Quick and Thick glue.  The fabric is a pretty vintage mint green linen tea towel that I cut up.  The little pillows came with some bedding that I ordered via Etsy, and you’ll see that bedding in a minute.

Next up I ordered a wardrobe from Miniature Crush.

I’ve painted up a few of these for my other dollhouses, but this time around I decided to go red!

I started with an undercoat of Dixie Belle’s Drop Cloth which you can see where I’ve distressed some of the edges.  Then I added three coats of their Barn Red.  I truly did not expect to love this look as much as I do!  But this is a Christmas Cottage, and that Barn Red is the perfect Christmas red.

After painting the cupboard inside and out, I sanded lightly using the Dixie Belle 220 grit sanding sponge.  I like to use the sponges when I need to use a bit of a delicate touch, like on miniatures.  Once dry, I added a coat of DB’s clear wax.  I swapped out the simple round knobs that came with the wardrobe for some drop handle style pulls from Miniature Crush.

I followed that up by lining the back wall of the interior in some red and white striped paper (coincidentally, also an October Afternoon scrapbook paper).

Next up I ordered a pair of twin beds from The Modern Dollhouse.

Sure, it was probably a silly added expense to add two beds to this room, but I just love the look of a matched pair of twin beds, don’t you?

I didn’t love the mattresses with their sloppy dust ruffles that came with these beds though …

but as you’ll see in a minute, I ended up tucking those out of sight.

To begin, I painted the beds in a base coat of Dixie Belle’s Pine Cone.

I originally ordered this color for a couple of other projects that I haven’t gotten to yet, but have since discovered that I really like it as a base color under Drop Cloth.

And that’s what I did on this pair of twin beds.

The Pine Cone is the perfect shade of ‘stained wood’ to distress back to under the Drop Cloth.

As you can sort of see in that photo above, I tucked the dust ruffle on the mattress underneath it and then I covered the mattress in some scrap fabric that I had on hand.

This time around I didn’t create my own miniature bedding.  I would have, except when I was searching for just the right Christmas themed fabric to use I ended up finding the perfect set of pre-made bedding on Etsy.

It’s mint green and red (to match the plaid wallpaper) with a little pink thrown in which ties into the pink bathroom that is on the floor above.  It has sweet reindeer and snow people on it, and it came with those adorable Merry Christmas pillows (plus those pillows that I put on the window seat).

I ordered it from Millie’s Mini Decor and I highly recommend her.  My order arrived super quickly and was exactly as pictured.

Next up, as I shared last week, I created some framed ‘art’ for the room.

I started with some unfinished frames that I purchased at Michael’s.

  I white washed the frames using the same technique that I used on the floor.  Then I cut some thin pieces of balsa wood to fit into the frames and painted them in a solid coat of Drop Cloth.  Once dry, I applied the two little snowman transfers shown above from the I.O.D. Kitschy Christmas transfer set.

They were perfect for this room!

With that, I’m calling this room finished!

What do you think?

Leave a comment and let me know!

Last week I shared the first completed room in the Christmas Cottage and I’m calling it the craft room.

And in that post I gave you a little, bitty sneak peek into the next completed room.

The room is just through that doorway on the right, and I decided to make it a bathroom.

I started with the walls, painting them in the same Pink Champagne that I used in the craft room.  Then I pulled out some scraps of subway tile ‘wallpaper’ that were left over from the kitchen in my last miniature project …

I had enough left over to do a half wall in this bathroom.

I also used the same inexpensive ($3.49 per 11″ x 17″ sheet) black and white flooring from Hobby Lobby.

Next up I decided to add some inexpensive fixtures that I found at Michael’s.

I needed to add a little bling to give them some life, so I applied some of Dixie Belle’s gold gilding wax to the faucets.  The gold will tie in with a couple of other pieces in the room too.

I also painted the toilet seat with Dixie Belle’s Caviar.

They are small details, but I really think they make the fixtures look slightly more upscale.

After putting the fixtures in place, I had enough room to add the blanket cabinet that I painted up last year in Dixie Belle’s Cottage Door.  It has a little more of that gold bling in the form of the I.O.D. Étiquettes gilded transfer on the doors.

Finally I added just a couple more details like a mirror over the sink and a framed floral print.  The mirror is one of the few pieces that came with the house.

With that, I’m calling that bathroom completed.

You’ll notice that I didn’t really come up with anything Christmas related for this room, but then not everyone decorates their bathroom for the holidays right?

I think I’ll move on to the 2nd floor next week, so be sure to stay tuned.  In the meantime, leave a comment and let me know what you think of the bathroom.

I had a feeling that once I took that first step of getting started on the Christmas Cottage refurb, everything would just start to fall into place.

And sometimes that just takes the right pink.

In this case, it’s Dixie Belle’s Pink Champagne.

It’s a really lovely pale pink, much more subtle than the brighter pinks that the house came with …

Those were more of a Pepto Bismol.

I’ve started on the third floor, and I painted both of those two rooms facing the back (there is a 3rd room on that floor, but you access it from the front of the house) in Pink Champagne.  Once dry, I decided to try a technique that I learned from Julie Warren on YouTube.  I’m not going to give you step by step instructions here, if you want that please check out her video tutorial here.

But basically, you piece together plain paper to create a template for your wallpaper.

This allows you make cuts and adjustments without wrecking your pricey wallpaper.  Then you pull that template off and use it to cut out your wallpaper to fit your wall precisely.

It worked beautifully!

As you can sort of see, I had to cut around some weird stuff on the left side of the ceiling.  Plus, it took two sheets of wallpaper to go all the way across, and I was able to get the repeat to work before I cut out the paper.  There are a few rooms with funky angles in this house, and now I feel much more confident about wallpapering those rooms too.

I will point out here that the repeat on the wallpaper is not exactly right, by which I mean that you can’t put two sheets of this paper side by side and have the repeat work.  You have to move the 2nd sheet up about 2″.  That could potentially be an issue if the paper is just tall enough for your room.  Just something to keep in mind if you are wallpaper in full size or in 1:12 scale.

Once the wallpaper was in place, I moved on to the flooring.  Once again I used the pine wood flooring from Hobby Lobby.  It comes in an 11″ x 17″ sheet for $7.49.  Fortunately, I ordered half a dozen sheets of this flooring a few months back knowing I would need it for this project because now it’s out of stock online, FYI.

Once again I used the Sweet Pickins Dark Oil Wax to ‘stain’ the floor.

Next up, I decided to add some wainscoting to the lower, vertical portion of that back wall.  I used the Mayberry Street wainscoting, also from Hobby Lobby.

It comes in 12″ x 3 1/4″ sheets for $2.49.

Since I wanted my boards to run vertically, I cut two sheets into 3″ tall sections.  Then I needed to choose a paint color.

I was pretty sure I wanted white, and you’d think that would be simple, right?  But no, I tried out my favorite Drop Cloth first and initially I didn’t think it worked well with the cleaner shade of pink on the walls.  So I tested out three other shades of white plus Dixie Belle’s Wicklow Glen, a muted green, just to see if I would like it.

But in the end, I still went with Drop Cloth.  I guess I’m just not a fan of brighter shades of white.

Once I had my sheets of wainscoting painted, I realized I had a little bit of an installation predicament.  If I just glued them straight to the wall, it would be difficult to get them to line up perfectly and hide any seams.  I also needed to add a bit of trim across the top to finish them off, and I thought that would be harder to do in place.

So I ended up cutting a piece of foam core board to fit that back section of wall.  Then I constructed that whole wall of wainscoting by gluing everything to the foam core board.  It was easy to add the trim and clamp it in place.  I also used some of Dixie Belle’s Mud in white to camouflage the seams between each section.

After then adding a final coat of Drop Cloth, it was easy to just pop the whole thing into place.

To add one more fun touch to the room I decided to use a barn style sliding door that I painted up a while back.  I shared this door with you a year or so ago in this little vignette …

I hadn’t really found a permanent home for it, so I pulled it out to try in this room and it worked perfectly

I gave the hardware its verdigris look using Dixie Belle’s Patina Paint in Copper with the blue activating spray.

After giving some thought to what the purpose of this attic space might be and how I wanted to stage it, I landed on it being a craft room.  And since this is a Christmas Cottage, one might use their large craft table to wrap Christmas presents, right?

I purchased some downloadable mini gift wrap on Etsy, printed it out and then rolled it up into rolls and wrapped a couple of small packages.

The table is one that I already had on hand, but also never found a home for.  Since I liked how that Wicklow Glen color worked with the wallpaper, I decided to use it on the base of the table.

The top of the table already had a Drop Cloth wash on it.

The rug and chair were also pieces that I already had on hand.

And with that, I’m calling the first room complete.

I realize that the room looks a little bit bare, but that’s because I definitely do not plan to keep this dollhouse for myself.  Hopefully a future owner can expand upon the theme and create a full-on craft room … or whatever else they might want this room to be.

In the meantime, what do you think?  Leave a comment and let me know!

Well shoot you guys, once again I managed to catch a virus on my recent trip.  How utterly frustrating and annoying.  I’ve gotten sick on nearly every trip I’ve taken over the last year or so.  I’m not sure where I’m going wrong.

First of all, I almost never get sick at home, only when I travel.  Second of all, I do all of the things while traveling.  I wash my hands frequently, I wipe down my airplane seat with a Chlorox wipe, I get plenty of rest, I exercise regularly, I eat right (OK, well, most of the time), I get the flu shot.  I did skip the Covid vaccine this year, mainly because as you’ll remember I got Covid on our Canada cruise in September so then you have to wait 3 months to get the vaccine, yada, yada, yada.

I do have a working theory.  About this time last year we signed up for an Am Ex card that gives us access to the Skymiles airport lounges where they have a ‘free’ buffet.  So for all of my recent trips (except Mexico), I’ve been treating myself to that buffet before a flight.  And I’ve gotten sick on all of my trips, except Mexico.  Coincidence?  Or is a germ ridden buffet to blame?

Well, I have another trip to my mom’s coming up in April so I think I’ll put my theory to the test and skip the lounge.  We’ll see how that goes.

All of this is to explain why I’ve been rather absent from the blog for the last week or so.  But I’m mostly recovered now and ready to get started on my next miniature project, the Christmas Cottage.

As I mentioned previously, my friend Sue gave me this dollhouse when no one in her family wanted it.  It even came with a deed showing that it was built in 1990.  Two lucky girls named Kristi and Dawn received it for Christmas.

It was built from a Greenleaf kit.  I googled it and it looks like Greenleaf is still in business.  In fact, they list this particular dollhouse, The Harrison, for $195 although it is ‘out of stock’.  I may end up purchasing some replacement roof shingles from them if I can’t find any that matches first.

My plan is to start by sprucing up the exterior.  There are a few repairs needed, some missing trim needs replacing …

and quite a few broken shingles do as well.

I also plan to remove the faded, and somewhat oversized silk flowers from the window boxes.

Not only are they a bit oversized, but they are all wrong for a Christmas cottage!

Once I’ve got the exterior in hand, I’ll move on to the interior.

It’s currently a bit sherbet-y with its Easter egg colored rooms.  I’m thinking that I’ll just paint all of the rooms in a neutral off-white to create a blank canvas and then go from there.

The house has 8 rooms, so it’s quite spacious.  In addition to the 7 rooms that are visible from the back, there is a fun little attic room that you can access through the roof.

Um, that green furry carpet is going to have to go though.  I hope that doesn’t end up being too much of a production.

It definitely looks like I’ve got my work cut out for me, so I think I’d better get started!

Stay tuned to see what I come up with for this dollhouse makeover.